Pannone dominates as Jays sweep
TORONTO — The end result might have meant more for the Toronto Blue Jays — a 6-0 win on Wednesday at the Rogers Centre — if only the opponent had not been the rebuilding, borderline pathetic Baltimore Orioles.
More might have been gleaned from the impressive performance by rookie left-hander Thomas Pannone for a threegame series sweep by the Jays, after being swept out of the Bronx by the New York Yankees earlier in the week. Take both with a grain of salt.
“We’d seen him a couple of times in relief,” Jays manager John Gibbons said of Pannone. “I didn’t really expect that, but he’s sneaky. The ball jumps on you. He did one hell of a job. It’s a great way to make your bigleague starting debut.”
The 24-year-old Pannone opened eyes in his first start in Major League Baseball and fifth major-league appearance for the Blue Jays. He had recently been recalled for a second time from Triple-A Buffalo after a brief demotion. Room for the roster move was created by the disablement of starter Marcus Stroman due to blister issues.
Somehow it seemed fitting that these struggling teams, which entered action a combined
81 games out of first place, would have to go 30 batters in before the first hit by either side: a groundball single to centre field by Kendrys Morales against rookie right-hander David Hess.
But it was Pannone’s no-hit bid into the seventh inning that had 40,595 fans buzzing in this midweek Camp Day matinee.
“That seventh inning, once the crowd stood up and they got loud — that was an experience I’d never felt before,” Pannone said. “Just a crowd that much behind you and rooting for you that much, it was amazing.”
The Rhode Island native, acquired from Cleveland, had his unlikely bid for a no-hitter prolonged leading off the sixth inning as centre-fielder Randal Grichuk, filling in for Kevin Pillar, raced in to left-centre and dove to snag a line drive off the bat of catcher Austin Wynns just before it hit the carpet.
“It was pretty obvious to me in the sixth inning that I hadn’t given up a hit,” Pannone said. “The play by Grichuk was unbelievable. That’s a lot of momentum right there. You look at all the perfect games and no-hitters that have ever been thrown and there’s always that one play that’s just like, ‘Oh my God, that play was amazing.’ I was saying to myself maybe that’s it. But I wasn’t really wrapped up in it too much. My main goal was to continue to execute pitches.”
With his bid still alive, the next batter, Cedric Mullins, laid down a bunt in a bid for a hit, but Pannone threw him out at first. Normally bunting for the first hit would be considered an assault on the unwritten rules of baseball, but it’s a different game now. After six no-hit innings, Pannone had thrown 88 pitches.
“It’s one of those games, he was chalking up a lot of pitches early,” Gibbons said.
“It gets to the point in this day and age when nobody throws 140 pitches. You don’t ever want to get in the way of the baseball gods ... I won’t say I was rooting for him to give up a hit, but it didn’t bother me when he did,” he said.
Leading off the seventh, Trey Mancini singled on the ground to left field, followed by a line drive near the warning track that Teoscar Hernandez teoscar’d into a two-base error, placing runners at second and third with nobody out. Then Pannone officially submitted his bid for consideration as a starter the rest of the season and beyond. With the two O’s in scoring position, Russell Martin at third base made a nice backhand play to hold the runners. Craig Gentry checked his swing and bounced back to the mound and Renato Nunez popped up to seal Pannone’s great escape. That was it for the left-hander: seven innings, one hit, two walks, three strikeouts and a hit batter.